ething very strange in the appearance of the men he
had just seen, something very mysterious in their actions, and he
wondered what it all meant, and what they were going to do. He stood
for a little while thus looking and listening. He could see nothing,
and could hear only the sound of distant talking. What were they doing
on the lonely shore thus at night? Then, following a sudden impulse, he
turned and cut off across the sand-hummocks, skirting around inland,
but keeping pretty close to the shore, his object being to spy upon
them, and to watch what they were about from the back of the low
sand-hills that fronted the beach.

He had gone along some distance in his circuitous return when he became
aware of the sound of voices that seemed to be drawing closer to him as
he came towards the speakers. He stopped and stood listening, and
instantly, as he stopped, the voices stopped also. He crouched there
silently in the bright, glimmering moonlight, surrounded by the silent
stretches of sand, and the stillness seemed to press upon him like a
heavy hand. Then suddenly the sound of a man's voice began again, and
as Tom listened he could hear some one slowly counting. "Ninety-one,"
the voice began, "ninety-two, ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five,
ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one
hundred and one"--the slow, monotonous count coming nearer and nearer
to him--"one hundred and two, one hundred and three, one hundred and
four," and so on in its monotonous reckoning.

Suddenly he saw three heads appear above the sand-hill, so close to him
that he crouched down quickly with a keen thrill, close beside the
hummock near which he stood. His first fear was that they might have
seen him in the moonlight; but they had not, and his heart rose again
as the counting voice went steadily on. "One hundred and twenty," it
was saying--"and twenty-one, and twenty-two, and twenty-three, and
twenty-four," and then he who was counting came out from behind the
little sandy rise into the white and open level of shimmering
brightness.

[Illustration: "'... AND TWENTY-ONE AND TWENTY-TWO'"]

It was the man with the cane whom Tom had seen some time before--the
captain of the party who had landed. He carried his cane under his arm
now, and was holding his lantern close to something that he held in his
hand, and upon which he looked narrowly as he walked with a slow and
measured tread in a perfectly straight line